Parents' guide: Participatory, immersive theater may not be suitable for small children.

Michael Skirpan wanted to make a point, and he wanted to make it in the most tactile way possible.

A third-year Ph.D. student in the University of Colorado's computer science department, Skirpan has spent years spreading the word about the complex concept of data privacy. He's penned articles and taken part in forums about the perils of putting one's personal information online. He's sounded off about the nefarious aspects of an increasingly interconnected world where online transactions, Google searches and social media mine personal data as a matter of course.

"I felt like articles weren't going to do anything. We've been writing articles since the Edward Snowden case broke on almost a daily basis," Skirpan said, referring to the former CIA employee and federal government operative who in 2013 leaked classified data regarding global surveillance programs. "I wanted to do something tangible."

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The stage offered a perfect opportunity.

A longtime fiction writer and slam poet, Skirpan saw a promising potential through live theater to spread an important message about data privacy. But Skirpan and a team of dozens of colleagues didn't want to settle for angry monologues aimed at a passive audience. Instead, they envisioned a piece that featured real-time examples of the perils of an online existence. They wanted to create a piece that integrated theatergoers' individual experiences, fears and, most fittingly, pieces of personal data.

"I wanted to do something that blended my new skills in data and computers with writing and poetry," Skirpan said. "We're trying to give people an experience that lets them see the reality they're creating, to let them see it firsthand."

The result is "Quantified Self," a piece of immersive, experimental theater that draws on audience members' online existence from the very first act. Skirpan, who directed the performance, joined a crew of about 30 data engineers, computer experts and theater professionals in creating a participatory piece that draws on social media, radio-frequency identification bracelets, search engines and mock interviews to make its artistic point.

The show, which is set to run for a single weekend in the ATLAS Institute Black Box Experimental Studio, fills the small space with massive "exhibition" set pieces and a cast committed to creating an interactive experience. Billed as a "data experience," the show breaks the traditional boundaries of theater.

"When you get there, it's emulating an event as if Apple were having a user night when they were releasing new software and letting some beta testers come in," Skirpan explained. "(Audience members) have to get in line, there are people wearing a fictional tech company's T-shirt. We get their name, we get their ID, we scan a bracelet and we associate that to an account that we've already created. The bracelet allows them to decrypt their data."

A narrative that feels downright Orwellian follows, albeit in a nontraditional way. After audiences arrive for the free-form, participatory introduction, they begin to untangle a story based on their own data and their own experiences. Through several participatory exhibits, audience members find out how much of their own data is available online. They're tested on the authenticity of that data, and whether or not it relates to their own existing online footprint. Free-roaming actors deliver dialogue based on different results, and audience members watch as the crew deletes their data at the end of the show.

It's all designed to pose a simple questions about a very complicated subject: How are massive, multi-national companies using the data that individuals freely offer as an automatic consequence of taking part in our modern, online world? What does a future where such intrusions are commonplace look like?

"For me, it's about ownership over the data and technology," Skirpan said. "I would say that we are blindly in control of our futures, but we're signing it off to other people. We should be careful and start considering the things about the future that we want to rein in and control."

The show's initial run comprises only six shows at the ATLAS black box theater, but Skirpan and the rest of the team behind "Quantified Self" are hoping for a longer run that reaches farther than Boulder. The show has already earned financial support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation's Knight News Challenge, Tom Yeh's Sikuli Lab and CU-Boulder's Engineering Excellence Fund. Skirpan is confident that the show's message has the potential to resonate in locales across the globe.

"If this show gives a reputation to the team, I plan on doing more," Skirpan said, adding that the team has already considered taking the show to cities on the East Coast. "This might consume the next few years for me."

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